Trouble Magnet (21 page)

Ashile refused to let the concern go. “If they don’t know you, why should they trust you?”

Flinx smiled at her. “It’s been my experience that people of this type believe that money trumps every other concern. Once we’re there and they ‘have’ Subar, it’s a possibility that they might decide to renege on their part of the deal and not pay me, to save the cred if they think they can get away with it. That’s the only kind of fight they’ll be prepared for. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not looking for pay and we’re all going to leave together.” He turned to Subar. “With your friends, if they’re there. That much I’ll be able to tell as soon as we’re near the building, before we even have to announce ourselves, much less go in.”

Genuine puzzlement fueled her response. “How are you going to do that?”

“Just trust me. I’ll be able to tell.” Given how frightened Subar’s friends must be, if they were still inside he shouldn’t have any trouble picking up their fear from outside the structure, no matter what kind of security it had in place.

Ashile was looking at him strangely now. Flinx did not have to read her emotions to know what she was thinking. She was wondering just what his undeclared capabilities might be. He offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile, and said nothing.

After disembarking from the transport, it was half an hour’s walk to the address they had been given. From outside the featureless, windowless structure, Flinx quickly perceived that Subar’s friends were indeed being held within. He did not have to strain his abilities to verify their presence. The interior of the building reeked with adolescent fear. He then proceeded to remind his younger companions one last time that whatever ensued once they were inside, they needed to stick to the scenario he had laid out for them. Working carefully, he secured their wrists behind their backs. When that was done they made their way to the entrance. It was located off a wide serviceway fronting the rear of the structure, away from the main street.

Having agreed previously upon a delivery time, those inside and in charge were expecting him. Security at the building was tight and seemed to impress Subar and Ashile. To Flinx, who had at times successfully penetrated the security surrounding powerful companies as well as the Terran Shell itself, the measures in place were proficient but hardly awe inspiring. Insofar as he could tell, they were each and every one of them designed to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering the building. Nothing he saw suggested that any measures were in place to prevent someone inside from getting out.

He felt confident, ready to gamble that everything he had carefully worked out with Subar and Ashile would go exactly according to plan.

Detecting their approach, an inner door at the end of a dirty, undistinguished hallway opened to admit them. A very large blond man stood there. Coupled with the physical description of the individuals he had glimpsed inside the pod’s priv place that he had supplied earlier, Subar’s emotional response was all that was necessary for Flinx to identify the man. Broad and muscular, he was the one who had been in charge of the team responsible for the death of the youth’s friends and the abduction of the survivors.

For his part, the blond’s attention shifted speedily from Flinx to the downcast bound youngster standing in front of him. The big man did not smile. “Yeal, that’s him, the one we put out the word on. The last one. The slippery little feeker who gave us the slip on the rooftop.” His tone suggested that Subar was already dead. The man’s awareness then shifted curiously to the equally tightly bound Ashile standing dejectedly nearby. “Who’s the prebreed?”

“Friend of his.” Having spent time in the company of cold-blooded killers, merchants, emomen, and aliens, Flinx could mimic their posture and tone with little effort. “Was with the scrug when I picked him up. Got hysterical, so I thought I might as well twofold the package.” He looked away, eyeing a nude image crawling up a nearby wall, indicating that Ashile’s fate mattered not a whit to him one way or the other. “Won’t charge you for two. Could have done her there and been done with it, but thought maybe you could use her. You know, to help convince him to yammer.” He shrugged indifferently. “Or whatever. I like to leave a scene clean.”

“Good forethink.” Corsk grinned unpleasantly as he took a step back. “Hall scanners opt you clean. Not even a knife. Young, but smart.”

Flinx acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod and gave the arm-bound Subar a shove, sending him stumbling forward. Eyes on the floor, Ashile followed meekly. She did not have to feign the fear she was feeling. What if the offworld “friend” to whom Subar was trusting their lives had simply been playing a game with them and had all along intended to sell them to these terrible people? If so, it was far, far too late to do anything about it.

“I ain’t stupid,” Flinx growled. “Know you wouldn’t let me inside armed. Counting on you common-sensing that it’s better for your long-term rep to straight me the reward you verted via the Shell than it would be for you to cheap it out.”

“Still something of a gamble on your part,” Corsk relished pointing out, “coming here alone like this, with the goods in tow.” He clapped a friendly hand on Flinx’s back. Beneath the younger man’s shirt, something stirred in response to the impact. Corsk noticed it, of course, but since security had declared the tall visitor free of any weaponry, he merely filed the observation for future query.

This deep into the building, the emotive stink of pain and fear was ubiquitous. Subar’s friends must be very near, Flinx knew. Perhaps as close as the back room into which the big man was now leading them.

Flinx jerked a thumb in Subar’s direction. “You said something about this piece of crola being ‘the last one.’ I heard about the breakin. So you got the others, then? Too bad if so. Means no more opportunity for me to garner some more cred.”

“Sorry.” Corsk grinned at him, senior pro to the younger. “Yeal, we’ve got them all. Now. A couple already demised, a few still alive. They’ll stay so, along with this new one, until the master is satisfied he has the answers to all his questions.” The big man’s gaze met Flinx’s hard. “Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”

“Neal,” Flinx replied understandingly. “All I want is the cred boost due me.”

Corsk nodded, glanced back over his shoulder, and raised his voice. “Arad, ladies—all’s
stret
. You can come in.”

Opposing sections of wall slid silently aside. One alcove released a pair of hulking yet well-dressed women. Each held a sonic rifle nearly as tall as Subar. The other—the other revealed an alien with whom Flinx was unfamiliar. Tall, long-armed, high-eared, it stepped out of its recess and in one easy, continuous, flowing motion lowered the pistol it had been brandishing. Flinx had detected them all even before he had entered the room, but the surprise on Subar’s and Ashile’s faces was palpable. He was pleased that he had been able to perceive the alien’s feelings, confusing and jumbled as they were. With a nonhuman, he could never be sure. Had the creature’s emotions been closed to him, it would have thrown the entire plan into disarray.

Moving to a cabinet, one of the giantesses unsealed a drawer and took out a credmitter whose guts had been selectively and illegally modified. Corsk nodded at Flinx.

“You’ve delivered. Now it’s our turn. Gail?”

The giantess came forward. Holding the credmitter in one hand, she extended the other expectantly. She was waiting for Flinx’s credcard of choice, he knew, so she could first security-clear it and then transfer the verted reward to his specified account. Subar looked over at him, his face reflecting an expectation of a different kind. Next to him Ashile’s expression mimicked her feelings. Reflecting her earlier doubts, they were now clashing violently.

There was no time for stalling. It was time for Flinx to do something. Now that the moment of crisis had arrived, what, the increasingly anxious girl wondered, did the offworlder intend to do, confronted as he was by a seemingly impossible situation?

What Flinx did was close his eyes halfway. Corsk frowned uncertainly as his visitor failed to produce the necessary credcard. The Amazonian Gail tensed. So did her twin. The alien’s expression was unreadable. Significantly, however, he slid a liquid step backward while a six-fingered hand shifted slowly in the direction of a bandolier replete with a diversity of small weapons.

As he had done a number of times in the past several years, Flinx readied himself to emotionally project onto those surrounding him. Just as he had taken down Chaloni and his companions in the rooftop priv place, he prepared to flood selected minds around him with a wave of focused fright and vulnerability intended to reduce them to helpless, quivering lumps of terrified id. Practice had taught him how to focus his newfound ability so that, for example, he could spare Subar and Ashile from its effects. Beneath his baggy shirt, Pip stirred in expectation.

Frowning, Corsk gestured toward the movement. “You’ve got something alive in there. Not that it’s any of my business, but what—?”

Flinx pushed outward.

“—is it?” the big man finished.

Flinx opened his eyes all the way. Corsk was eyeing him expectantly. The Amazonian twins were staring at him. Off to the left, the alien’s limber fingers had coiled around one of several weapons attached to a diagonal chest strap, though the gun had not yet been removed.

Flinx blinked. Ignoring Corsk’s query, he strained anew. More forcefully this time. Once again, nothing happened. Subar’s expression now perfectly duplicated the growing look of alarm on Ashile’s face. And with good reason.

To his horror Flinx realized that his Talent, always intermittent, had chosen that moment to diminish on him. Practice and experience counted for nothing when his unique ability decided to go on vacation. It had chosen a particularly volatile moment to do so.

Remembering Corsk’s question, he tried to formulate a reply as he fumbled for the credcard he carried inside a secure pocket. “It’s a minidrag from Alaspin. Reptilian in appearance, but not cold-blooded. Opto example of xenoconvergent evolution.” Working at the seal on his pant pocket, his fingers were trembling. He could not recall the last time his fingers had trembled.

As he did so, he could not avoid feeling, if not projecting, emotions. With his thoughts racing several different ways at once, he momentarily forgot that there was another present who could also read, if not project, feelings.

Sensing her master’s distress, Pip stuck her head out of the neckline of his shirt, surveyed the physical situation as well as the rising emotional squalls that threatened to fill up the room, and decided to take action of her own. Her reaction instantly drew Flinx’s attention away from his own internal conflict.

“Pip, no!”

Launching into the air, wings spread, Pip darted toward the ceiling. Analyzing the potential dangers milling below, she instinctively began ranking them according to the degree of threat to her master that each presented. Whereas a human evaluating potential dangers would have looked to the presence and type of weapons, she read emotions in search of differing degrees of friendliness or hostility.

Taking another stride backward, tall ears thrust in the direction of the unexpected flying creature, the alien drew his weapon of choice. At almost the same time, the giantesses retreated and Corsk pulled a pulsepopper of his own. Ducking away from the sonorous hum being generated by the minidrag’s membranous pink-and-blue wings, the big man was simultaneously angry and uncomfortable.

“Call it off,” he growled warningly. “Get it back inside your shirt
now,
or I’ll fry it!”

Flinx raised both hands. The gesture was both entreaty and warning. “Don’t shoot! I’ll get her down, just don’t think hostile at her!” Looking ceilingward, he implored his companion. “Pip! Come down here—now!”

But Corsk wasn’t watching the flying snake anymore. His gaze had fallen and turned, to refocus on Flinx. For the first time, he seemed to see his tall young visitor in an entirely new light.

“Don’t ‘think hostile at her’? Why would that…?” In his business, analysis was something best left to the contemplative. He was paid not to analyze, but to react. Now he did so, bringing the muzzle of the pulsepopper up sharply.

His attention still concentrated on where Pip was hovering just beneath the ceiling, Flinx saw the man’s hand come up out of the corner of one eye. He knew what a pulsepopper could do. The tiny globe of plasma it discharged would incinerate whatever it came in contact with. He started to open his mouth to say something at the same time as Corsk’s finger slid forward on the trigger.

There was a brilliant flash of light, pure white and intense as a sun. He was not conscious when the sound of the concussion rolled through the room.

Time passed.

Flinx was relieved, but not especially surprised, when he came around. It meant that he was not dead, and that something besides the pistol’s plasma ejecta had rendered him insensible. Though still shaken and far from thinking entirely coherently, he had some idea of what might have happened. Because it had happened to him several times before.

On each occasion he had been on the verge of being killed, the difference between life and death a matter of seconds or less. Each time something, some unknown part of him, had risen intuitively to his defense. That it had to do with his still-blossoming abilities there was no doubt, but as to its exact nature, he had no idea. It was different from the kind of collective surge he and the Tar-Aiym Guardian Peot had used recently to defeat the Vom at Repler.

Whatever its true nature, it was evident that it involved generating energy, displacing matter, or both. Most recently, it had flared forth unbidden to save him from an assassination attempt on the primitive world of Arrawd. Being rendered comatose each time it happened prevented him from examining or analyzing it in any way. He never knew exactly what took place, or how. He was privy only to the consequences.

In this instance, as he picked himself up off the floor of the room, these involved the unexpected protrusion from the ceiling of three pairs of feet—three female, one male. The remainder of the bodies that were attached to the dangling feet were embedded somewhere within the ceiling and the lower layer of the upper floor. The trio of individuals to whom the feet belonged had been thrust straight upward from where they had been standing by whatever it was that leaped to Flinx’s defense whenever he was in imminent danger of extinction. Shattered and powdered fragments of ceiling material sifted downward from the holes in the ceiling, forming little piles of debris directly below the dangling feet.